


A Sick Sense of Humor

by colt



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dehydration, Gen, PTSD, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 10:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2064963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colt/pseuds/colt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He just escaped a 70 year ice prison to land himself in an oven. It was so unbelievable it had to be comical."<br/>An argument with Tony, and suddenly Steve's knee deep in hells inferno- otherwise known as the fucking desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sick Sense of Humor

“Yeah, well if it wasn’t for my tech you’d still be trapped in a fucking ice-block.” Tony shouted, his propellers flaring in response to his tensing muscles. He took off at Captain America, who looked stricken, even before Tony was shoving him into the ice chamber and slamming the door. Why on earth did SHIELD have an ice chamber? Under the guise of fury, panic welled up against the walls thick with ice sheets. Steve lunged at the door, throwing his weight into the reinforced steel, again and again till his shoulder was throbbing and searing with the rush of returning blood. He had begun to scream, at Tony, at everything. He turned away, breath tearing out of his throat in short gasps, and paced on the rink. He could see it, another lifetime ago, the water hurling towards him, could feel the death settle into his bones, the paralysis. His eyes glanced at the walls pressing into him and his anxiety was filling the room, masking the oxygen, turning it to dust. He steadied himself with one deep breath of all he could gather and perched his body in a stance that said ready. He plowed into the wall opposite the door, hoping for a little leisure in the security. He must have went at it a hundred times before the crumbled wall fell away and he was crashing through the wind, hurtling towards a mass of sand. It was as if a landmine had detonated, the way the sand stretched towards the blaring sun in a splayed ring when his body smashed into the ground. Steve breathed in a mouthful of sand. It was in his lungs, his eyes. He turned with a groan, glancing at the sky and glimpsing a vague shape of the heli-carrier on the horizon, its mirrored plates giving way to subtle, unnatural reflections, before he fell into an obscure darkness. 

The desert seemed to move around him when he was out. He dragged his head from the quickly filling imprint of his face on the ground and scanned the expanse. It was as immense as an ocean, as they say. He hadn’t really been to many deserts, or any for that matter. He had the barest knowledge of survival tactics in places like this. It would have been better, if less bearable, to be in the snow. It was his home field. Instead, he picked himself up and trudged along through the sand. 

For the first week he ran without stopping. There wasn’t much to stop for, anyways. It might not seem that long when there are distractions and destinations, but all Steve could hope for was some signal of time passing, of his steps taking him someplace. But the desert wasn’t a definite landscape, it blew away. His footprints whipped into his face when he thought he had left them behind and the sun was always glaring at him from overhead, as though he were some intruder. He choked out laughter on a dry tongue every once in a while, he had too. He just escaped a 70 year ice prison to land himself in an oven. It was so unbelievable it had to be comical. He ripped up his tee-shirt, fixing the strips around his feet, bleeding as they were and brimming with sand. He hiked his hood to brim over his face but his lips were still cracking and as good as his super body was, it wasn’t much without water. He couldn’t do much but reflect on the circumstances that brought him here. He was on a- what- a ship that floated in the sky, in the year 2013? And Howard Stark’s brat of a son had locked him in a freezer and he knocked his way here, as though this would be much better. The temperature at night fell low enough to make him reconsider his decision, even if there hadn’t been the immediate danger of dehydration and following death that sort of buzzed around him at all times.

Two weeks later he had taken to an impromptu regimen of walking during the morning, sleeping through the afternoon, and running at night. He wanted to get his body heated during the frigid hours of moonshine, and walk off the chill morning air. Plus, he was able to avoid the harshest daylight hours by laying on his stomach and sleeping them off. Of course the sun leached at the fibers of his sweater, striped them thin and washed the colors, but he still had his hood and the remnants of shirt scrapes to wrap around his nose in the storms. He would run until he couldn’t, he guessed. When the dehydration brought him to his knees, then that would be it. It was almost something to look forward to, the loss of hope, something equivalent to looking forwards to dropping into bed after a week of tall work orders, but a little more permanent. He sucked on rocks to generate saliva, something to swallow, but the stone felt odd on his sandy tongue. Once a cat had licked him, and the texture reminded him of that, before the swelling and scratching had overshadowed the hive-ridden memory. Steve was tired, despite the time spent sleeping. He was so tired it weighed his shoulders towards the ground. It was too much for one mind to go through, a never-ending wartime mentality he hadn’t been able to escape. First he was fighting for food on his plate, Great Depression stuff that people these days hardly knew about. Then he was fighting for his country. And now, he was just fighting to survive. The surviving part was the hardest, the one he had the most doubt about winning. There were so many more forces that were much more complicated than the economy trying to bring him down. Down as in into the ground, in a deep dug grave, if he even got one of those. God, the one he wasn’t sure existed anymore, was sure throwing a lot of low blows. Steve grabbed at his heart, as though he were worried it would freeze over again. He made a habit of it. It was the only thing in this wide span of sun that actually gave him some warmth. 

\---------------------

Steve was laying on the ground, wondering if he could even get up again. It’d been a near a month, if he had to guess. A month and no water to speak of. It felt weird to acknowledge, but he was thinner. Certainly not what he had been, but he was gaunt, his muscles were lean, his skin was scaly. Really, he should be dead. Any other human would be dead. But he wouldn’t question what his body was up to, he’d only try to use it while he still could. A month and no sign of water, it was unthinkable. He thought he’d have to run into water eventually, or that the SHIELD ship would find him by now. Maybe Tony never mentioned that he was in the freezer. Maybe Tony thought he was frozen in that ice room, waiting patiently to be uncovered and defrosted, like before. Well he wasn’t. He kept his eyes fixed upwards just in case. That is, when he could stand the blazing fire ball shriveling up his eyes. 

A week. A week later and he didn’t get up until noon. He crept across the sand, heaving in brief breaths that cut off halfway too soon, and tried to find reason in his actions that happened seemingly without consideration. He wouldn’t move another inch if he actually examined the situation in all its immensity, but as it were he’d crawl until he could find reason to stop, and then he would die. Maybe that was it, he knew he’d die, and figured why not go till he reached his limit? Why not test his limit? Sometimes Steve grinned, but it tore his lips to bits so he didn’t do it often. 

One day the sky wasn’t just colors indicating stages in a day, it was home to a helicopter. To be honest, the sky was like nothing he had ever seen on those mornings when his eyes still held light. The sunrises were to be rivaled with and he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to die in the face of them. The sky seemed to be putting on a show for him only, sometimes. It woulds spread like a brush fire, turning the horizon into a wave of pinks and oranges. And when the helicopter interrupted that sky, he suppressed the upset with quenching thoughts of savior. He tossed his scarves to the wind, using the last of his weak strength to hop and sprint, to demonstrate a liveliness worth stopping for. The blades spun sand into a vortex.


End file.
